The United Way of Trinidad and Tobago’s #BuildBackBetter: Preparing Primary Schools for the New Normal Project is a call for collective action to support schools in high need communities who serve low income families, to re-open safely and efficiently in ways that does not add a financial and emotional burden to families who need time to recover from the economic effects of the COVID-19.
We are working to reduce continued learning loss in these communities, due to the COVID 19 lockdown of all schools since March 13, 2020, and to reduce both physical and virtual absenteeism of those most at risk to ensure that this crisis does not increase the number of school drop outs in the future.
The opportunity that presented itself was to use our resources to improve the resilience and capacity of these schools to manage living with the new norm of COVID-19. Along with this prospect there was also a need to acknowledge that the schools and communities most affected by prolonged school closures and the economic effects of the Pandemic are the schools serving low income and high need communities.
As we move to re-open, we need to address that many of the children, particularly the younger ones have been virtual absentees, through no fault of their own. While the investment is being targeted on the initial 10 primary schools in the United Way Trinidad and Tobago Building Bridges from Learning to Success Programme, we have been able to expand it through the input of our funding partners to 14.
The Goal of the Project is to support the schools to prepare for the New Norm and the return of children for IN school classes. This will allow close to 5,000 primary school children to return to school in a safer environment in order for them to be better prepared for the new pedagogy of blended learning which will be the future of schooling for at least the next 2 to 3 years. As it stands there has been limited preparation of the schools for their return either in terms of investment in necessary infrastructure or policy.
In preparation for the New Norm of COVID-19, the Project aims to:
- Improve handwashing capacity by installation of multiple faucet stations for a total of about 130 faucets
- Distribute over 3,000 items of child and parent friendly communication materials to the schools
- Encourage universal mask wearing by increasing understanding and distributing about 24,000 masks to the students
- Support the Principals and school leadership to develop a culture of shared responsibility for living in the New Norm as it applies to school
The Project Budget is TT$870,000 or US$135,000 with about 61% allocated to handwashing, 8% to communications, 31% to mask wearing and 6% to project oversight.
Thanks to our funding partners: Scotiabank, Nutrien, First Citizens, Republic Bank, BHP, Guardian Group, Shell, Atlantic LNG, Grant Thornton Orbit Solutions, The Victor & Sally Mouttet Foundation and Lonsdale Saatchi & Saatchi; we have been able to meet this fund raising objective to achieve the goal we set out to above.
Also aligned to this Project will be a more comprehensive re-modelling of St Gregory’s Fifth Company Anglican
Primary School using remaining UWTT Fifth Company Community Impact Project funds with an aim to
support a safer return to face to face learning for this rural community.
It is our intention that all of the efforts of this project would provide a blueprint for other schools to follow in terms of infrastructure, communications and policies so that they may able to safely re-open as well.